What is Google Question Hub?

Google Question Hub is a services that Google offers where they identify questions that are asked in Google Search that don’t have good enough content to fulfill the need, and they feed those content creation opportunities to publishers who can create great content to fill that demand.

Did you know that around 15% of the queries that people search for on Google every day are brand new and Google has never seen before?  Shocking, I know.   All of those queries reflect a demand for online content where there isn’t adequate content to fill the need, and therein lies opportunity to create that content and fill that need.   Google knows the demand is there, and can track how many other searchers start searching for that same content….and then feed that demand to publishers who can benefit from creating great content to pull up on those results.

How Does Google Question Hub Work?

When Google recognizes that there is a new question asked through their search field and when they haven’t found content that effectively communicates a solution, they’re giving searchers the ability to submit their questions so that publishers can be made aware of the need for the content.

Google is collecting all of those questions and then has created an interface where businesses and publishers of content can see the demand for the content as it’s identified.   Here is a screenshot of how that looks for publishers when they’re browsing popular questions that have been posed through Google.

The businesses and publishers can then see the content creation opportunities and how popular they are, and identify the opportunities that can benefit their businesses.   This gives publishers a great tool in order to be out in front of content demand and ensure that they can fill those content gaps on the internet and be able to profit from that investment. 

PRNsit shared a video on Twitter browsing the interface of Google Question Hub so that you can have a better idea of what tools are available for publishers as you’re able to browse the questions by categories, submit content as an answer to those questions, and then track the performance of that content.

 Being able to understand what content creation opportunities can help lead to new conversions of online product sales, service sales, lead generation, etc. is important to grow valuable content that will reap eyeballs and profits in the future.

How Google Question Hub Will Impact Marketing?

Every product and service being sold is providing a solution to a problem that a potential customer is having, and by purchasing the product or service they are solving that problem.  The root of most searches on Google is users asking a question that they need a solution for and many times that solution is in the purchase of a product or service.   As companies are effectively identifying and distributing Q&A content that serves these needs, Google is reflecting that content in search results and leading new customers to the content and products that can solve those problems.

This connection between help content and marketing content is the future of content creation, and Google is enabling marketers to be aware of where the current content gaps are through Google Question Hub.   Established trends of Google queries are available through Google Trends, where you can see the interest level of popular queries over time.

But, what about the queries that haven’t reached a critical mass of queries in order to be identified as a trend yet?  Those opportunities will be addressed by Google Question Hub.  There, you’ll literally be on the ground floor of online content creation, and whoever is able to use that tool profitably will have a clear advantage over other content marketers.

How Answerbase Works with Google Question Hub

Answerbase is already in the business of ensuring that content gaps are filled through Q&A content creation, as we engage visitors to websites through them asking questions about products and services, and then those questions are published on pages optimized for Google to gobble up and display in results (SERPs).  As customers engage Answerbase’s Q&A tools on websites, we’re already able to judge content demand and give Content Insights to customers on what content they should consider creating in the future in order to fulfill the content demand.   Google Question Hub and working that data into Answerbase’s Content Insights allow’s us to enhance those recommendations further and gives businesses the tools to take the guess-work out of content marketing and focus on topics that they’re confident are in demand and can convert more sales.

Have Questions about Google Question Hub?

We encourage you to Contact an Answerbase Specialist who can give you more information about Google Question Hub and how it can help with your business’ content marketing efforts.

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Product Page Q&A Integration

When you’re running an ecommerce store, most of the customer service questions that you’ll field will likely be related to the products you’re selling.  Your product details page is the most visited page on your website and the most natural for your users to engage with your business, why wouldn’t you have customer service software and content integrated seamlessly into those product pages so that your content can assist in converting sales?  It’s important that your knowledge base has APIs or widgets that allow you to integrate at least product Q&A capabilities right into your product page…see an example here:

What that will do is ensure that your the Q&A content generated from your previous customer service inquiries builds a useful knowledge base that gets distributed within your product pages and can help convert new sales.   Answerbase customers boast that up to 75% of customers who ask questions through the product page convert to a sale.   To have your customer questions being answered, but not effectively distributed to impact sales doesn’t make sense.

Duplicate Question Recognition and Management

When your customers are engaging your customer service software and knowledge base, either on the product page or through the help or knowledge base section of your website, you want to make sure that it has the ability to effectively recognize if the information they’re seeking out is already available.  The questions that the user inquires about should be compared automatically to your existing database of previous customer service inquiries and relevant matches should be presented through a predictive auto-suggest capability as the text field is being populated.

If this is done well, this should serve both your customer and your business well, since customer service questions that have already been answered should be addressed automatically with your existing content through the software.   From the customer’s standpoint, they get a  great answer to their question immediately without having to wait for a response via email or chat.

Studies show that 71% of customers prefer self-help that don’t require them to interact with a person.  Give them that option, its preferred by them and saves you time and money if done well.  Answerbase customers see that between 60-75% of questions posed by customers are answered automatically by existing Q&A content that has already been answered in the past.

SEO Friendly Landing Pages for Content

The customers who are engaging your website and asking you customer service questions are not the only people who have questions about the products you sell.  Guess who else does?   Potential customers are asking those same questions through Google and other search engines and they are ripe for purchasing the products that you sell.  This gives you a great opportunity to turn your customer service content on your knowledge base into content marketing material that can actually help you acquire new ecommerce customers!

See an example of how this works below, as a customer looking for a specific product is introduced to content from an ecommerce merchant’s knowledge base as the first organic result:

The right customer service software should have pages that are optimized for search right out of the gate, with SEO-friendly slugs, tagging, page titles, etc.   An example of an ecommerce store doing this well is Epestsupply, where they have quadrupled the organic search traffic to their site and doubled their overall traffic by growing a valuable knowledge base of content…simply responding to customer questions (self-serving plug…they use Answerbase to power that knowledge base).   This is a huge opportunity to both support your customers while also creating a new customer acquisition channel in the process.   Answerbase has studied customer results where the knowledge base content that is created simply by addressing customer questions can turn into one of their most productive channels.    What we see is that new customers acquired through customer service content has an average Lifetime Value (LTV) of up to 2x more than the overall visitors from Google, and up to 6x more than those coming from Facebook.   You can save costs on customer support while in the same breath increase your sales and conversions, now that’ something to get excited about!

Support Multiple Content Formats

Your customers will have different preferences on how to be serviced as customers, and your customer service knowledge base of information should be communicated in formats that play well to the products that you sell, generational considerations, and even down to the personal preferences of your customers (which, conveniently, will service many).   Ensure that your knowledge base of customer service content not only supports text but also allows you to post videos, images, and documents to support their informational needs.   See an example of how this can play out to most effectively service a customer’s request for information related to a product…

This will help ensure that your content addresses their specific needs with the most appropriate format(s).

Partner & Customer Community Features

This section is most relevant if you want to consider getting manufacturers, influencers, partners, service providers, or even other customers involved with creating valuable customer service content that you own which can benefit your business.   It’s not uncommon to have at least a small group of partners that you trust in that process for at least some of the content formats you support…so ensure your knowledge base software at least offers the capabilities even if you just want to test it.

A good knowledge base will not only have community features, but also allow you to identify specific groups of users and allocating special permissions to those groups.   For example, if you want to open up answering of customer service questions but only to select customers, select partners or service providers, etc.   You can get the right mix that is comfortable for your business, and ensure that your customers are showered with the best content from the best possible sources within your network.  Your ecommerce customer service software should allow your content to visually distinguish the source of the content and make that clear to end users.  See an example here on how answers from a company’s staff are specifically highlighted and pinned at the top.  See how this example distinguishes between staff answers and answers submitted by everyone else…

A good ecommerce customer service solution should have the ability to scale up and down these features as you’d need, whether you choose to open capabilities up to only a select group of influencers….or whether you’d want a full blown community with user profiles, gamification, etc.

It’s common to give customers who have purchased a product the ability to post answers to new questions about that product, but on the other side of that some ecommerce businesses prefer not to have to deal with time or cost of moderating user generated content.   There are pluses and minuses to everything, so you should weigh those out and determine what makes sense for your business…but don’t get stuck with a knowledge base that doesn’t give you the option to enable these features at any time.

We hope this post has been helpful as you consider what knowledge base and customer service software to use for your ecommerce store.   If you have any questions or would like a consultation to speak about the goals of your ecommerce site, you can Contact Us and we’ll have an ecommerce specialist help point you in the right direction.

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The Internet’s Content Deficit

Did you know that Google recognizes that about 15% of the trillions of searches done per year, don’t have sufficient content available to fulfill that demand for information?  When asked how many searches Google manages, in 2016 Google communicated that it was at least 2 trillion searches.   Since then….they’ve just communicated “Trillions”.   But let’s do some math there, let’s say they are still processing even just 2 trillion (we use “just” lightly there, and its almost certainly expanded from there as Android continued to increase its market share since then, etc.)…..with 2 trillion searches that means that over 300 billion searches per year don’t have content in place to effectively fulfill the demand.   That’s astounding, isn’t it?   It’s both astounding and a huge opportunity….that they’re capitalizing on through Google Question Hub.

Of course…this content gap and the need to fill it isn’t new…Answerbase has been helping to fill the content gaps for years through more efficiently managing ecommerce customer questions in an SEO friendly way.  But, what’s interesting about the Google Question Hub is that Google is privy to is what searches are just bubbling up to the surface where the searches are brand new….never been seen before.   That is content that isn’t yet available, because the demand for that content is just popping up.  There’s an opportunity out there for merchants who can effectively use these new tools.

This content deficit is certain to not go away, since there will always be new questions asked about brand new products, brand new services, etc…but the efficiency of filling that content gap will certainly improve…and Google’s helping to do that in a major way.

Google Question Hub Identifies Brand New Questions Needing Content

So…it still begs the question….What is Google Question Hub?

For these brand new questions that are on the cutting edge of what people are searching for….Google is providing a way for users to submit their queries for the world to know about so the content gap can be filled.   See a screenshot of how this is playing out in the regions where Google has started to collect these queries….

Then…as they’re collecting these queries Google’s Question Hub allows publishers you to see those questions that are posed through Google…where Google just doesn’t have sufficient content to present a good answer.

See some screenshots of how this is currently displaying for publishers:

There are other screenshots that show that Google will let publishers know when the questions have been asked multiple times, further supporting the demand for that content…and therefor as the recognition of that demand grows it further justifies it may be worth taking a look at.

How Google Question Hub Impacts Ecommerce Content Marketing?

The simple answer to this question is having more data to make better decisions with content strategy…in order to service customers that will purchase your products with great content they actually want.   With all the other tools that digital marketing departments and agencies use to formulate their content strategy, Google Question Hub has the potential to be an important part of that decision making.

The value is simple, you’re able to quickly identify what new questions that your current customers (or potential customers) are asking about the products that you sell and having that known demand shape what you post content about.  This is obviously very early as these questions are just bubbling up to the surface….but but as they gain some traction that becomes interesting because if it is a question that will be repeated then you have the opportunity to have a great answer of a question related to products you sell…and lead them to your online store where they can purchase from you, grow your remarketing list, grow your email marketing lists, etc.   For digital marketers who are consistently asking the question “What do we prioritize next?” when it comes to content strategy, this can help answer that question.

Google Question Hub & Answerbase

As mentioned earlier, Answerbase is helping ecommerce merchants to fill in the content gaps (and create better content for searches that do currently have results) as ecommerce merchants have a monetary incentive to provide great answers to questions that their customers ask through the Answerbase product page Q&A widget.   Those answers on average receive a 96% positive rating by customers…and those Q&A combinations are spawned into landing pages which we’ve seen increase organic traffic to their ecommerce stores year over year as it better fulfills the content demands.   Most of the time these are questions that have been asked before (for some of our customers over 60% of the questions are answered through existing content), but most of the time that content is being held/managed in emails or other support ticket systems in a way that isn’t SEO friendly…and therefor there is a deficit in the information being made accessible in a way that Google can actually use to fulfill the customer demand.

But…what Google Question Hub allows Answerbase customers to do is to use any additional resources to start addressing relevant questions that are just bubbling up to the surface from customers through Google.   Answerbase customer can post that new Q&A content through Answerbase as well, to continue to add to it’s valuable knowledge base and be automatically fed into the sitemap, which will allow them to stay on the bleeding edge when it comes to content creation to service their customers and potential customers.

If you’d like to learn more about Google Question Hub and it’s implications for ecommerce digital marketing, or how Answerbase will be utilizing this data, please Contact Us and we can schedule a call about how it can help your ecommerce content marketing strategy.

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The Puzzle

If you’re selling products that are made by a manufacturer that other ecommerce merchants are selling as well, then you may just be using the product description that the manufacturer provided on your product page. The great thing about that is its an accurate description of the product that you didn’t have to spend time and money to write up. The problem with that is that most of the other ecommerce merchants who are selling that same product started with the same exact product description…and more than would like to admit have probably just kept that. This is where you run into the “Duplicate Content” issue with ecommerce SEO.

See, Google reads all of that content and when it sees that many different sites have the same exact product description on their pages for the same exact product….it’s not going to list all of those pages in the results since they’re really not adding anything unique. So, what Google does, is it tries to find out which one is the original and which one it should show in the results. Now, maybe your site was the first one that indexed that product description, maybe your site has a very high page ranking which will work into your favor, but for all of those other sites that weren’t the first in line there….you have an SEO problem in order to ensure your listing shows up. This is the problem we’ll focus on fixing in this post so you can show up in the results and have those customers buy from your ecommerce store.

How to Help Solve It

Let’s get the obvious out of the way

Well, the first step would be to consider rewriting the product descriptions so the content is original to your site and from an SEO perspective, Google no longer looks at it as duplicate content.  All of us know, this task is daunting, and sometimes not practical.   Unless you have pocket full of discretionary cash sitting there, where it makes sense to just dive in and do that for all of the products you have listed (and continuously do that for new product listings), then let’s focus our efforts here on how to get the most bang for your buck.  Start small and focused…and then go from there.

Get answers to these three questions:

• What are your top selling products?
• What are your highest value products?
• What products are most likely going to stay on your site the longest?

Make a list or products which answer these three questions.   Where those three lists have products that overlap…that is your answer on where you should focus your time to help solve your duplicate product description SEO issue.   List those products out and have your team come up with knowledgeable and original product descriptions for those.   Start with 10, 20, 50….whatever makes sense with your bandwidth and budget…and do those well.   As you have more resources to spend, expand that effort.  This will ensure that you’re energy is focused on making sure you’re in the results for the products you can sell the most of for the longest period of time.

Now that we’ve covered the “duh” fix….what are some other fixes to bring the SEO value you’re looking for?

Product Page Q&A

There is an easy way to create original content specifically related to the products you’re selling created where you can fix this problem in a reactive way, by just naturally engaging your current customers.   The customers that are currently visiting your site are reading the product descriptions you already have in place…and they’re recognizing gaps in information that they want fulfilled before their purchase.   Given them an easy way to ask those questions by adding Ecommerce Q&A Software to your site, and let those Q&A pairs be on your product page in order to bolster the original content for that product.   These questions will match similar product questions that customers are asking through search, and you’ll be the one with the original answer.  This does two things, naturally grows search traffic to your store and also highlights information that customers want to see….which you can use as a guide to optimize your current product descriptions for SEO.

Product Reviews

Similar to product page Q&A, user reviews on products is a great way to generate original content that is specific to your site and from your customers, and having that boost the SEO value for your product pages.   This is also to help with your duplicate product descriptios SEO issue. The beauty of user generated content (UGC) is that similar customers think….well, similarly.  So, when one customer jots their thoughts down as a review….its common for other potential customers to be searching using those same terms and thoughts.   When Google sees that your site has original content that’s a match, boom…you get the desired result and those customers are introduced to your store in the results.

The above solutions is the place to start if you’re looking to solve your problem with manufacturer descriptions and duplicate content.   Use them as part of your overall SEO strategy, and as you continue to post new original content on your site and Google starts gobbling that up….you’ll see that it doesn’t take an unreasonable amount of work to get great results.

Are you an ecommerce merchant? Get more information about Answerbase Ecommerce Q&A Software.

The post How to Fix the Duplicate Product Descriptions SEO Issue appeared first on Answerbase.

What are the benefits of adding Q&A to your product pages?

The core benefits of product Q&A is increasing ecommerce conversion rates, product description seo, and to increase ecommerce traffic.  As you probably know, most users start their questions about products through search engines like Google, so its important for online retailers to create that content and make it available in a way that search engines will gobble it up and send those potential customers your way.

Answerbase creates an optimized page for every Q&A combination, which performs well in search results and leads those potential customers right to your product page.  This allows you to service your existing visitors, and also lead brand new visitors right to your doorstep.

Ecommerce merchants using Answerbase product Q&A have experienced:

• Up to 75% of product questions they answer convert to a sale as you engage your customers and reduce ecommerce bounce rates.
• Organic search traffic grows by up to 4x their previous levels
• Lifetime Value (LTV) of new customers acquired through Q&A generated by Answerbase is up to 2x higher than those from Google and up to 6x higher than those from Facebook.

You can view some ecommerce case studies for more information on how product page Q&A has contributed to their success.

What does Q&A look like on a product page?

You should add Q&A right on your product page.  If you have tabs on your pages, then we recommend creating a new tab which has “Q&A” or “Questions & Answers”.  If you don’t support tabs, simply list it below your product description so that users can have a chance to easily as a question about any details that you haven’t provided yet on your product page.

Answerbase’s default e-commerce widget will give the user the ability to post a question, and also see the most popular questions about the product they’re looking at…see an example below of one of Answerbase’s Q&A widgets integrated into a product page:

If a user starts asking a question that is similar to questions that have already been asked and have answers available, it will suggest that available content to the visitor so they can click on their question and view the answer immediately.

This allows them to get their questions answered immediately and get on with the purchasing process, so you can make money!

How do you add Q&A to your product page?

Answerbase supports app store integrations with ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Bigcommerce and other popular platforms for easy integration.  If you are on a home grown platform or another platform, no worries…Answerbase makes it easy to add Q&A to any product page through our Full Featured Q&A widget for e-commerce.

Once you’ve signed up for an account (or Free Trial) on Answerbase, you can go under “Integration” in your administration area and you’ll find our widget builder where you can customize a widget to reflect the same style/colors of your site.   Once you’ve adjusted the widget’s design to your liking on the widget builder, it will give you the appropriate code on the bottom that you can simply copy and paste into the product page of your e-commerce store.

Within the code. you’ll see parameters where you can have your site dynamically insert the product information so Answerbase is able to understand what product the widget is relevant to when it displays on your page.  It also allows Answerbase to promote that product to the user who asked the question and any future users who come from search engine traffic, to help you convert more customers.

We hope things are going well with business, and if you have any questions about how Q&A can help your online store feel free to contact Answerbase’s Team for a free consultation.

If you’re interested in learning more, view ALL of the benefits of ecommerce Q&A software.

The post How to Easily Add Q&A to your eCommerce Store’s Product Page appeared first on Answerbase.

More and more businesses today are finding customer support communication is a resource for winning brand-new customers, not just retaining existing ones. Viewed through that lens, customer support isn’t simply an expense; to the contrary, it’s a potential source of new customer revenue and a very valuable marketing channel. That’s a shift that’s putting the customer support team in a position to boost top-line revenue and influence the overall business as never before, and creating a much closer relationship between these two departments.

Let’s take a look at this relationship, what’s changed and why – and what leaders from each side can do to seize opportunity in this new environment, to benefit both teams and the business as a whole.

Influencing customers with customer support content

Technology is enabling customer support teams to create and share content online, and both customers and potential customers are demanding this content. For example, when a visitor goes to a company’s website or Facebook page to post a question about how a product works, customer support teams are proving to be the most effective resource to provide the answer – and leave a positive impression not just with the person who asked, but with everyone who reads it.

Suddenly, it’s not just marketing teams that are influencing how customers perceive the company – it’s also customer support teams. They’re no longer only resolving customer issues; they’re actively making customers and prospective customers happy in the process. That can result in getting more business from existing customers, converting prospects into new customers and turning happy customers into zealous advocates for companies (as Zappo’s CEO advocates). It’s all about being a part of the way people perceive brands and positively influencing those perceptions. This is a powerful shift that forces companies to think differently about the customer support department, and it has sparked a very rewarding connection between these groups. Let’s explore the chemistry, shall we?

Bringing customer support expertise to content marketing

Developing and encouraging a closer relationship between marketing and customer support is becoming one of the most powerful steps a company can take to increase the impact of content on customers and potential customers. As digital marketing strategist Greg Shuey once noted, “even content creators who have years of experience can struggle to come up with great content ideas.” That’s where customer support and marketing intersect, and it’s making a huge difference.

After all, customer support teams hear from customers every day – and that puts them in a unique position to know what’s important to customers, what their pain points are, which topics will resonate with them and much more. Customer support teams now use technology to track customer questions and other communications, and through analytics they gain a deep understanding of what customers care about. In this way, customer support becomes a valuable source of information to guide marketing in developing content strategy and in creating content based on that strategy. This gives marketing departments proven content they know will get the best results.

Understanding that any good relationship is a two-way street

It’s not just that customer support content can help marketing; it works the other way, too. Content marketing benefits customer service, as a Salesforce blog post has pointed out. The content marketing team is constantly developing brand and product content that customer support can use to educate and empower the customers with whom they engage.

One key to building and maintaining a strong relationship between marketing and customer service is having the right technology to make it easy to track customer interests and pain points, pull reports and effectively communicate the information between departments. When done right, both teams will be able to draw on that information to help ensure they’re always providing the most effective, satisfying responses – whether from the marketing or support side of the aisle. This optimizes the conversion of new business while also increasing retention of existing customers, with both teams working together to achieve company goals more effectively than either could alone.

As the relationship between business and customer becomes increasingly content-driven, marketing and customer support become increasingly entwined. For some companies, this collaboration is a brand-new marriage that will naturally require a bit of adjustment. But as the relationship continues to blossom and the two learn to engage and play off each other’s strengths, they’ll learn that together they can do more than ever to help win the hearts of customers (and the revenue that comes with them).

The post Customer Support and Marketing: A Match Made in Heaven…or at Least Online appeared first on Answerbase.

Let past performance be your guide.

Take stock of the content you’ve published and see which topics are continuing to perform well and which aren’t. Track conversions of the key business goals that you’ve set for your content, and see where you are. With software that’s available to track content performance today, you can get a good deal of useful information without having to spend a lot of time on this. Using the Content tool in Google Analytics, for example, you can quickly see page views and time spent on pages, as well as compare performance to past dates and track which pages are most visited. More importantly, set up goals in Analytics to see what content is actually converting for you. HubSpot also delivers insights including page performance reports that you can sort by topic. Finally, your own content and knowledge base may also give you insights into what content is performing well. For example, our Answerbase Q&A software has built-in Content Insights specifically around customer question-and-answer activity to identify the most popular topics. You want to focus on your content that is most popular, solving the most problems and delivering the desired results. Identify these topics and let this be where you start.

Ask your employees about customers’ continued interests.

We’ve talked before about looping in sales, customer service representatives and others with direct customer contact as you’re developing content so you can get their input on what they’re hearing from customers. It’s just as important to check back with them regularly on this, and to ask specifically about pain points that customers and potential customers are currently experiencing. Consider creating a formal program for them to give you this feedback based on what customers are telling them – perhaps a weekly email asking for the top five concerns they’re hearing about. It’s worth the effort, because anytime the content in your blog, Q&A forum or other information source on your website successfully addresses an issue that’s of immediate concern to someone, you’ll see a payoff, whether it’s making a sale to a new customer or keeping a current customer happy. But first, you need to know what they’re concerned about at any given time, and that’s where your own people can be a huge help in keeping focused on the right topics.

Check what topics are “hot” and trending on the internet.

After you’ve identified some relevant topics for your audience using the above approaches, there are tools available to identify which of those topics are trending generally in search and social activity. If a topic that’s performing well on your website with your audience is also serving a large and growing audience in general, that’s where you want to focus your attention. First Stop is Google Trends, where you can see how content topics are performing in Google searches over time and if the topic is gaining or reducing in search popularity. For trends on social media, BuzzSumo identifies hot topics based on the number of total shares across Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. Use these tools to further refine the topics that you know are performing well on your site, and that will give you great guidance on where you should be focusing your time and efforts.

Always remember that the topics you chose when you started your content development efforts aren’t necessarily the topics people want to read about today and or that will continue to give results. Staying on top of what kind of information people find useful and informative is vital. It’s something that takes a constant effort – but that doesn’t mean it has to take a lot of time or resources, given the tools available to help you with it. Follow the tips above to make quick work of fine-tuning your content, keep it fresh and get the best business results.

The post Tips to Focus Your Content on Topics That Bring Results appeared first on Answerbase.

1. Optimize content to improve your search performance

This is something you may have heard a thousand times before, but it’s so important that it bears repeating: Search engine optimization (SEO), or optimizing your content to be “found” by search engines, is essential to making sure your content is seen by as many people as possible. SEO is a specialized skill that’s well worth engaging a professional to do, whether in-house or by contracting with an independent expert. With someone like this on your team, you can adjust everything from the content of your posts to the user experience your website offers to improve your search engine ranking. An important subcategory of SEO is social media SEO, now that search engines have begun to take Facebook likes, retweets and other social signals into account when ranking search results.

2. Make it easy for people to share content

When you post content on your own blog or web page, make it easy for others to share it directly from there with one simple click by including social sharing buttons for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and other popular social networks. An easy-to-use sharing platform like AddThis will allow you to quickly choose and add buttons. For the greatest impact, give some serious thought and consideration to how you use these. For example, it may be tempting to include buttons representing every social network you can think of plus email and RSS feeds, just to be sure you’re covering all your bases. But all those choices can cause people to overlook the ones that will perform best for you. If you’re not sure which those are, don’t be afraid to experiment. Start with four or five and see which ones generate more shares; then replace a low-performing button with a new one and see how it goes; and keep fine-tuning until you have a selection that will result in maximum impact.

3. Share your content on social media

For an investment of nothing more than some time and effort, you can share your content with all the contacts you’ve established through your accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and other social networks. And you can minimize the time it takes by using a social media management tool (see #4 below) to automatically send it to all your social networks simultaneously.  If you’ve followed the other steps that we’ve described earlier in this series for effective content marketing – such as choosing the best topic and format, and including a strong call to action – you’ll be providing high-value content that your contacts will in turn want to share with their own contacts. When they do that, your exposure will increase exponentially as more and more people see it.

4. Optimize your social content for sharing

Creating high-value content may be the most important thing you can do to get your content shared on social media, but it’s not the only thing. For example, adding a photo to a tweet will make it 94% more likely to be shared by your Twitter followers. People are also far more likely to share positive content rather than negative content, so keep that in mind as you consider topics and perspectives you want to present. Always be sure to include a message with anything you repost on social media asking people to share it. Requesting a retweet has been shown to result in up to 51% going on to share a tweet.

5. Increase exposure with advertising on social media

It’s great that you can share content on your social media accounts without having to invest marketing dollars in the process. But if you really want to ensure ongoing exposure and sharing by others, you should also consider paying to promote your content to the audiences you want to reach.  Social network advertising services draw on users’ shared information to target relevant users based on their interests, behaviors and similarities to existing audiences for your content. This increases the chances that the right people will see it and be motivated to share it. This is critical to getting the continued exposure that keeps on drawing relevant audiences to your content – audiences that you can further target with tactics like effective calls to action and remarketing.

6. Keep track with a social media management tool

When you use social media to share content, it can be overwhelming to keep track of all your activity and the impact it’s having on your content marketing efforts. Social media management tools like Hootsuite, Sprout and TweetDeck are designed to help you manage social network channels more efficiently and effectively. With Hootsuite, for example, you can monitor all your social media streams in one place, cross-post among social media channels and respond to messages and comments, among other things.

It doesn’t take a lot of effort or budget to amplify your presence online. You may even find that creating the content requires more time and thought than taking the necessary steps to distribute it widely. So what are you waiting for?  Follow the advice in this post, and then sit back and watch how much harder your content will work for you.

Learn more about all of our 6 Steps to Achieve Content Strategy and Marketing Success and how they can help you get more from your content marketing efforts.

The post 6 Ways to Distribute Content Marketing More Effectively appeared first on Answerbase.

Our clients’ experiences show that user-generated Q&A is proving to be one of the most effective ways to improve organic search results for your business and to drive people to your website. We’ve seen Q&A consistently deliver growing amounts of organic traffic and have positive impact on ecommerce SEO for our clients, as the numbers below show. These are real results of Answerbase clients. If you make Q&A a key component of your website content, don’t be surprised if you start to see dramatic results like these in your own business.

• Many clients double or even triple their organic traffic year over year
• One client shows a 19% increase in organic traffic per week in the first two months after launching Q&A
• Another client’s results show a 32% increase in organic traffic month over month for a period of 12 months, and continued consistent growth

Further down in this post, you can also see the actual Google Analytics organic search chart for one of our customers and the consistent growth pattern described above. But first let’s dive into the reasons why Q&A produces such compelling results.

Longtail search drives traffic…

Q&A falls in the category of “longtail” search content, which report after report has shown to drive high search rankings. “Longtail” refers to a relatively long series of words in a search – for example, “How does Honda Accord mpg compare with Toyota Camry mpg” vs. just “Honda Accord.” Q&A lends itself to longtail searches because questions are more likely to take a longtail form than other types of searches. This makes Q&A extremely good at driving organic search traffic. Here’s why.

• Natural language: Like other user-generated content (UGC), Q&A tends to match closely with the natural language people use to construct their search phrases. For example, Angie’s List has pushed to the top of search rankings with a Q&A blogpost on how much it should cost to install a water heater. If people are typing in the question “How much should water heater installation cost,” and the content Angie’s List provides is headlined “How much should water heater installation cost?” it’s a no-brainer that the content will do a good job of driving traffic to the article on the website. That content originated on Q&A.
• Specificity: Q&A by nature offers very specific information that people are looking for – and the more specific the information, the more likely it is to contain the “longtail” keywords that often characterize a person’s search language. To return to the example above, “Honda Accord” is so general it’s going to return countless hits if you’re the rare site ranking high for those general terms. But “How does Honda Accord mpg compare with Toyota Camry mpg?” is so specific it’s going to connect you directly with people who are looking for a particular piece of content, and it’s also less competitive. If you can provide the content people are seeking in a less competitive space, you’re going to rank high. Basically, people are telling you exactly what they want to see. All you have to do is deliver it.
• Content insights: Q&A is a back-and-forth process in which you can incrementally improve organic search performance by constantly learning more about what people are looking for and fine-tuning your content accordingly. One expert on the topic recommends using Google Analytics to identify the best longtail keywords for your business, as well as paying close attention to your own website’s forums and monitoring social media for clues about what people are interested in and what they’re looking for.   Answerbase creates longtail content naturally, but also provides Content Insights to accomplish this goal; the technology identifies content that needs refinement or that needs to be created to effectively satisfy demand.

…and longtail traffic drives conversions

A growing amount of Q&A content means more relevant content being indexed with higher rankings in organic search, which will bring more people to your website. Once they’re there, you’re in a perfect position to ask for their business – and get it. After all, they’re in search of specific information that you’re providing. Once you’ve done that, follow through with a strong call to action to help move you closer to your business goal and then continue to stay in front of them through remarketing (or retargeting) your call to action. Your goal might be driving sales, by requesting that they buy a product or sign up for a service from you, or driving database development, by simply asking them to provide contact information.  Traffic produced through Q&A content can help produce more results in both these areas.

Always include a call to action and remarket to your audience to successfully convert visitors who find your website through Q&A content. The longtail keywords that typify question-based searches are far better at converting visitors than short keywords. One study concluded that “longtail searches outperform generic shorttail searches on almost every measure,” including click-through rates and increasing ecommerce conversion rates.

There’s no arguing with results

Of course, we always like to point back to the actual results of Answerbase clients that make the best case for Q&A, as the graph below demonstrates. It shows the search engine traffic growth one of our clients experienced from using Answerbase’s Q&A system, and you can actually see the sustained growth of organic traffic to their Q&A environment.

If you’re looking to bring dramatically more traffic to your site and also increase conversions, consider Q&A as part of a larger content strategy that puts together quality content, effective distribution, and constant measuring and refining to get the results you’re looking for.

Try it out for yourself, with a Free Trial of Answerbase Q&A Software.

The post How User-Generated Q&A Grows Traffic and Conversions on Your Site appeared first on Answerbase.

A call to action serves two purposes:

1. It empowers your readers with actionable content they can use to follow through on what they’ve just learned.
2. It benefits your business by making it easy for people to buy your product, or learn more about your company, or whatever your goal happens to be.

For example, our goal in this series is to (a) educate people about how to achieve content strategy and marketing success which serves our target audience and (b) introduce them to Answerbase in the process. To that end, we have a call to action at the end of each of our posts to encourage visitors to read our general guide regarding content strategy and marketing so they can become familiar with the subject and link to earlier steps we’ve outlined.  We also provide calls to action to start a free trial of the Answerbase platform which you’ll see clearly on this page.

Now, what about you? What will be your most effective call to action for content marketing? In the content below, you’ll see additional examples of calls to action aimed at achieving different goals. You’ll also find some guidance to help you determine which is right for you, based on the action you want your readers to take, as well as tips to maximize effectiveness.

Building awareness? Provide an opt-in

Stay top-of-mind with potential customers by asking them to opt in to receive a newsletter, get email alerts about new posts or otherwise be advised of content that may be of interest to them. This is a good approach to use with people who have found your content independently – by googling while doing general research on a topic, for example. It reduces the risk that you’ll lose them once they leave your blog by providing a way for you to continue to stay in contact with them.

Top tips:

1. Make sure what you’re offering is of real value to them. After all, they’re parting with their private contact information; whatever you send them in return should be engaging, useful and informative.
2. Don’t alienate them by using their information for anything other than what they agreed to. In other words, if someone signs up for your newsletter, don’t send them a product pitch. That kind of “bait-and-switch” in content marketing only serves to erode their trust in your business.

Beefing up your list of leads? Invite inquiries

Follow through on posts by including an inquiry form a reader can fill out right there on the page. Accompany the form with an invitation to ask you a question about the topic, and a promise to provide an answer. It’s up to you what type of question to invite, depending on the content you’re publishing. It could be anything from general advice that’s related to the subject you’re writing about, or more specific information about how your company and its products or services might be of help to the reader.

Top tips:

1. Keep it short. The only contact information you need for this purpose is someone’s name, business name (if applicable) and email. According to one expert, two of the top reasons people don’t fill out contact forms is that they’re too long and they ask for phone numbers. You can always request more information from the reader later if you need it.
2. Be selective. While you do want to keep the contact form short, you also want to be sure you get the information as you need. For example, if you’re selling business software that targets businesses with less than 50 employees, ask how many employees their company has. That way you’ll be able to set priorities based on relevance.

Hoping to spark sales? Direct them to more info

Once you’ve piqued someone’s interest in a topic with a blog post, follow through by providing the opportunity to go to your web page to get more information. Don’t hesitate to lead readers to content-related products or to your online store. Remember, people want to be informed about the topic or they wouldn’t be reading your post. If the content is relevant to your products or services, it’s perfectly reasonable to direct readers to more information about them.

Top tips:

1. Use clear, direct language. Try something like this: “Learn more about (your product or service) and how it can help you with (whatever the issue is that’s the subject of your post).” The sentence uses a strong command to them to take action (“Learn more”) and also tells them why they should act (“how it can help you”), two recommended qualities for an effective call to action.
2. Make it easy to take another step. Once you’ve sent someone to a product page, don’t leave them hanging! Be sure the page is set up to make it simple to click to place an order.

Ready to close the deal? Just go ahead and ask

In tip 2 above, we recommend making it easy to take the next step on a product page. But this applies to other types of pages, too. If your goal is to close the deal – whether by getting a product order, a signature on a petition, a member sign-up or whatever else it means to your business – just go ahead and ask the reader to do it. One of my favorite examples of this is the simple “Join” call to action on an informational post on Angie’s List. The post answers a reader’s question about how much water heater installation should cost, and at the top and bottom of the page includes a prominent appeal to become an Angie’s List member.

Top tips:

1. Make it stand out. Don’t bury the lead, as they say in the news business. Make sure your visitors can quickly see your appeal. In the Angie’s List example, it’s in a prominent navigation bar at the top of the page as well as on a large banner at the bottom.
2. Make it compelling. In addition to making it easy to act, as in tip 2 from the previous example, give a reason to act. “We’ve done the research,” Angie’s List tells the visitor. (And right there on the page is proof, in the informational content.) For visitors who find that value proposition compelling, signing up is a natural next step.

Missed them on their first visit? Remarket to them

The beauty of online visitors is once they visit your site, you have the opportunity to continue to expose them to your services, products, and message on other websites through remarketing (aka retargeting).  If you’ve been around marketing or sales for a little while, it’s likely that you’ve heard about the “Rule of 7” which is basically stating this:

For the majority of customers, your marketing message must be heard at least 7 times before your prospects will take action to buy your product or service.

With online marketing, this is easier than ever to achieve.  Take advantage of Google Adwords, Adroll, or any of the other remarketing services available that drop a cookie on your visitor’s browser, allowing you to continue marketing to them as they browse around the internet. This will get those 7 “touches,” bring them back to your site and let them convert. This makes sure that you don’t lose contact with those relevant visitors, so that you can continue marketing to them until they’re good and ready to react to your offering.

That’s it – now go make sure your content is achieving your goals!

Remember that its not enough to just create great content; you need to make sure those eyeballs that are seeing your content are engaged and the content is accomplishing your business’ goals. We hope the tips are useful and help you get the results you’re looking for.

Learn more about all of our 6 Steps to Achieve Content Strategy and Marketing Success and how they can help you get more from your content marketing efforts. See how that worked?

The post Get Real Business Results from Content Marketing with a Strong Call to Action appeared first on Answerbase.